Are You Consuming Plastic with Your Sea Salt?

Ever since the days I started my own food company emphasizing truly clean and healthy foods, I was skeptical of the new market emerging in the early 2000s for “sea salt.” While it is reasonable to expect that such salts contained a better mineral profile than processed salts, our seas are tremendously polluted.

Sullied seasoning: Sea salts come with a dash of microplastics

The amount of microplastics in the salts was so low that they pose no health risk—even if the only salt you ever eat is sea salt and you eat a lot of it. However, the flavored pollution is still worth keeping an eye on, the researchers argue.

We’re only increasing our use of plastics, they note, which “might lead to the gradual accumulation of [microplastics] in the oceans and lakes and, therefore, in products from the aquatic environments. This should necessitate the regular quantification and characterization of [microplastics] in various sea products.”